A Christmas Homecoming: A Novel

aroline was in bed, staring at the ceiling. She thought Joshua was asleep, but she was not certain. As soon as she knew for sure, she would get up and begin her own search for the body. Their only answers lay with Ballin himself. Something that forced the killer to go through the trouble of moving the body.

Ballin was quite a big man, and strong; he must be heavy. Inert bodies were not called “deadweight” for nothing. No woman could have carried him alone. Two together would have found it difficult, but perhaps not impossible. One man might have managed, if he was strong and used to lifting.

Joshua was asleep. She was sure of it now. Very carefully she slid out of the bed and crept to the dressing room, feeling her way. Thank goodness they had a separate room for clothes where she could light a candle and dress without wakening him. She must dress warmly, and put on her boots. She might need to go somewhere unheated.

She considered starting with the attics, but they were mostly servants’ quarters. No doubt all the rooms would be used, one way or another, and the whole area would be far from private. Also, who would willingly carry a dead body up four flights of stairs? There might be box rooms up there, full of old furniture and suitcases, cabin trunks and the like. Excellent places to hide a body, but not if you were trying to do it alone, in the middle of the night.

She stood on the silent landing in the very faint candlelight, thinking. She must make no sound, or she would disturb someone. She could imagine the furor: the screaming if it were Mercy, or even Lydia; the outrage and suspicion if it were Douglas or Mr. Netheridge; the sarcasm if it were Vincent, or even James.

Of course one of them knew exactly where Ballin was. But that was a thought she refused to entertain. It would paralyze her. Courage. She must use all the courage she had. And for heaven’s sake, also the sense.

How long did it take for a dead body to begin to rot, and to attract scavengers, not to mention smell? The rats and flies, so loved of Renfield, would soon give away a corpse kept in a warm place. Therefore it would be somewhere as cold as possible. And she couldn’t be squeamish about searching.

They burned both wood and coal in the house fires, so there would be a coal cellar. Very possibly there would also be a place inside for wood, certainly at least for kindling. Had anyone looked there, thoroughly?

The house where the meat and other perishable food was kept would be perfect, but the servants would go in there regularly. They would check all the stores to make sure nothing was spoiling. But they might not go to the icehouse, not in this weather.

She went down to the cloakroom where she had left her outside coat when she had arrived, not knowing then that they would be unable to take walks. She put on her boots. The cellar would be bitterly cold, and dirty.

She lit one of the lanterns that were stored in the cloakroom and set off.

An hour later she was aching, filthy, and shuddering with cold, and she had found nothing that helped in the slightest to figure out what had happened to the body of Anton Ballin.

Think! It had to be somewhere. Was it conceivable that whoever had murdered him had somehow destroyed his corpse? But how? Burning? The only possible place for a fire big enough to get a whole body into would be the furnace used to heat the water in the laundry room. And the maids did the laundry regularly.

Were the fires kept going all night? Hardly likely, at least not hotly enough to destroy a corpse.

Still, she would look.

She went slowly, very reluctantly, to the laundry room. The fire under the big copper tub in which the sheets were boiled was glowing dimly. One might have burned a rat in it, but nothing bigger. And the smell would have been awful.

She stood in the middle of the room and turned around slowly. Apart from the copper one, there were deep tubs next to the wall, and mangles. On the shelves above, there were many jars for all kinds of substances: soaps, lye, starch, chemicals for cleaning various stains on different kinds of fabrics.

She walked slowly through to the drying room. Long airing racks were suspended from the ceiling to deal with days when it was impossible to dry anything outside.

There was another large tub by the wall. She tiptoed over to it and lifted the lid, her heart pounding. There was nothing inside it but loose, light brown bran. It was useful for lifting certain stains, or for rubbing fabrics that needed extra care. Determined not to have to come back and search the room again, she found a wooden spoon with a long handle and poked it down into the bran. It met no resistance. With a gulp of relief she closed the lid.

There was nowhere else left to look, except the still-room. There were plenty of bottles and jars in it, but a glance told her there was nowhere large enough for a corpse.

So where was he? It must be two in the morning now. Christmas Day. And here she was frozen cold, hunting around her hosts’ laundry room for the body of a dead man. And she had told Alice that life in a company of touring actors was fun!

The only place left was the icehouse. It couldn’t be there, but where else was there to look? The stables? No, Caroline knew enough of horses to rule that out. Horses smell death and are afraid of it. They would certainly have let people know if there were any sort of decaying body near them. Even in the hayloft the smell would be appalling, and they would have had a plague of rats within hours, let alone days.

There was no choice but to go outside across the yard to the icehouse. She went to the scullery door and unlocked it. Why anyone had bothered with the bolts in this weather was beyond her. Habit, and obedience possibly. They were stiff to move, and the top one was high, but she managed, with rather a noise. She hoped fervently that everyone else was asleep.

She pulled the door open and stepped out, holding the lantern high. She did not completely close the door: She needed the crack of light to guide her back, and somehow leaving it ajar made her mission seem less final.

The air was bitter but there was no wind at all. In fact, it was possible to imagine that it could thaw, just a little bit, by morning. She walked half a dozen steps across the yard. The snow was completely untrodden since yesterday’s fall, and there was not a mark on it. It was deep enough to cover the top of her boots and cling to her skirts. When it melted she would be soaked.

The icehouse was ahead of her, half under some trees whose black branches seemed to rest on the roof. There was something else up there: piles of wood like discarded floorboards, half-covered with snow. There were more timbers to one side of the house, and bags of something. Coal? No, there was room in the cellar. Kindling? It would get soaked and be of no use. Perhaps rubbish no one had been able to dispose of properly in the snow.

In spite of the stillness, the wind seemed to sigh a little in the bare branches, and several lumps of snow fell off the trees. She was right: It was thawing, just a tiny bit.

Could the killer have put Ballin’s body out here, with the rubbish? How long could it remain hidden? Perhaps they had planned to do something else with it after a few days?

She walked with difficulty, forced to lift her feet unnaturally high in the deep snow. Suddenly she was anxious. Should she look now, or ask Joshua to help her in daylight? But what a cowardly thing to do, when she didn’t even know if there was anything here or not. And maybe if whoever killed Ballin saw her footsteps in the snow leading to the side of the icehouse, they would know someone had been there, and move the body before she had another chance to check for it.

She reached the sacks of rubbish, holding the lantern high so she could see. The timber had slid a little, and several pieces were lying over the tops of the bags. She put the lantern down carefully and started to lift the top piece of wood. She put it to one side and lifted the next one.

Then it happened—the shift in the snow on the roof. She looked up. A few lumps dropped off and fell onto the sacks. The stars were brilliant above the pale outline of the ridge, and she could see the ends of wood poking up. A larger lump of snow fell. Then as she stepped back, without thinking pulling the wood with her, there was a roar of sliding snow on the slates. A figure launched itself at her, diving downward, head thrown back, mouth wide open. It struck her so hard she staggered backward, falling into the deep snow as it landed hard, half on top of her. By the yellow light of the lantern she saw the hideously distorted face, glaring eyes, flesh eaten away and sliding off, teeth bared.

She screamed, again and again, her lungs aching.

Nothing happened. No one came.

Ballin’s terrible face was inches from her, his body hard as rock. But something had happened to him, beyond agony, beyond death. The flesh of his cheeks seemed to have half-dissolved and slipped sideways, crookedly. Even his nose was rotted away, twisted to one side.

For a moment she thought her heart was going to burst. She was alone in the night with the face of evil, the vampire without his human mask. This thing was a creature of the night, dead and yet not dead.

There was no one to help. She must do this alone. She steadied her breath and forced herself to grab the lantern and look at the body. It was frozen rigid, as unbending as the planks of wood that had held it up there on the icehouse roof.

His face was terrible, as if it were falling apart. How could that happen in the paralyzing cold, and so soon after death?

She made herself look at it again, steadily. Her hand shook, and the light of the lantern wavered over Ballin’s face. Caroline stared and stared, and slowly she realized that it was not decay that made him look as if he were rotting and falling apart. His face was literally sliding off his skin. It was actor’s makeup. More than greasepaint, he had a thin layer of some rubbery kind of substance, a gum of some nature, to pad out his cheeks and nose. Underneath it she saw the harder, deeper lines of a different face, one that in some half-remembered way was vaguely familiar. She knew him, but she had no idea from where, or when.

And as she understood that, she knew why his killer had moved the body.

Shuddering with cold and horror, she gingerly pushed Ballin away and stood up. She must go and tell Joshua. If nothing else, they must put the body in some decent place, not leave him lying on the ground by the icehouse. None of the servants, rising early to prepare breakfast, must find him.

She tramped back through the snow to the back door. Thank heaven it was still slightly ajar. Her teeth were chattering from the cold.

She walked slowly through the scullery into the kitchen. She was trailing water behind her. Her whole coat was covered with snow from when she had fallen, and her skirt was wet at least a foot above the hem.

Where had she seen Ballin’s true face before? It was in a photograph, she was sure of that, definitely not in person. But his name had not been Ballin. She would have remembered that. Anton. Had it been Anton something-else?

She was in the hallway now. Only a couple of candles were alight. The tall clock said it was nearly three in the morning. She reached the bottom of the stairs and started up, holding her soaked skirt high so as not to trip over it.

She was almost at the landing when she remembered. The photograph had been in the green room of a theater: Joshua had pointed it out to her because he felt that the man in it was a great actor. Anton Rausch. A handsome face, powerful. And there had been a tragedy connected to him. He had killed some actress in a murder scene in a play. A knife. It was supposed to have been a stage prop, a harmless thing whose blade would retract when it met resistance. Only it had not retracted, because Anton had replaced it with a real knife.

Or someone had.

It had ruined his career.

She realized she was standing still at the top of the stairs. The cold ate through the fabric of her clothes and chilled her flesh.

She walked to her own bedroom and opened the door. She still had the lantern, and she set it down on the dresser.

“Joshua,” she said calmly.

He stirred.

“Joshua. I know who killed Ballin, and why. I found his body.”

He sat up, fighting the remnants of sleep. Then he saw her clearly. “Caroline! What happened?” He started to climb out of bed.

“It’s all right,” she said, her voice steady. “I’m cold, and a bit wet, but I’m perfectly all right. I found Ballin’s body.”

“Where?” He was up now. He reached for his robe, warm and dry, and put it around her. “Did you say you know who killed him, or was I imagining it?”

“Anton Rausch,” she said quietly. She was shivering uncontrollably now.

“Ballin?” he said incredulously. “Oh, God! Of course. I should have known the voice. I saw him play Hamlet! I only met him in person once. Oh, heaven, I see.”

“Do you?” she asked.

“Yes. Vincent. He was the other actor involved in that tragedy. He was the lover of the actress who died. Anton Rausch was her husband.”

“Then he came here for revenge? But how could he know Vincent was here? And why now? That was years ago.”

“Perhaps Anton could prove his innocence now. I don’t know.”

“But if he attacked Vincent, for revenge, then Vincent is not guilty of murder. It doesn’t make a lot of sense,” she argued. “And again, how did he know Vincent was here?”

Joshua shook his head. “It wasn’t a secret. The theater knew where we would be, the manager, several others. It just wasn’t advertised because it was a private performance.”

“But if Ballin attacked him—I still think of him as Ballin—why didn’t Vincent defend himself?” she asked.

“Because Anton didn’t attack him,” Joshua said quietly. “Think about it, Caroline. If Anton had attacked Vincent with that sharpened broom handle, then Vincent would have injuries: tears on his skin at least, wrenched muscles where they fought, bruises, perhaps rips in his clothes. Vincent must have attacked Anton, taking him by surprise. He went armed. He intended to kill Anton before Anton could prove who actually changed the knives that night.”

She tried to imagine it. “How could Anton prove such a thing, after all this time?”

“I don’t know. Perhaps a dying confession. A stagehand, a prop man. We’ll never know now.”

“Then why didn’t Anton just tell the authorities, and have Vincent arrested?”

“There are lots of possibilities. Perhaps he wanted Vincent to do something for him, a repayment other than having to answer to the law.”

“Poor man,” she said quietly. Joshua took her hand. “We can’t leave him lying in the snow by the icehouse. Should we waken Mr. Netheridge and tell him?”

“Yes. I think so. Since this is his house, he deserves to know. We have taken enough liberties already.”

“Have we?”

He smiled. “Yes. Very definitely. And unfortunately we won’t even be entertaining his guests on Boxing Day.”

“But you will help Alice, won’t you?”

“Of course. We might even perform Dracula sometime.” He smiled with a wry twist of his lips, his eyes very gentle. “But we will have to find another Van Helsing.”